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If you want to know how to start a sports blog, then you will find the info in this blog post to be quick, helpful, and easy to implement.
We have figured out how to start a sports blog that makes you money and gives you a chance to express yourself and your sports knowledge.
Starting a sports blog is as easy as 10 steps to success.
- Choose A Blog Niche and Name
- Buy Web Hosting – GreenGeeks for Budget-Conscious, Kinsta or WP Engine for the Affluent
- Sign Up for Email Marketing with GetResponse
- Get Access to a Premium WordPress Theme Collection With Genesis Pro
- Buy A Serpstat Subscription for the Best Blog SEO Tool
- Monetize Your Blog with Affiliate Marketing, eBooks, and Online Courses
- Promote Your Blog on social media With Tailwind
- Sign Up for MonsterInsights Pro Blog Analytics
- Write Pillar Content & Linkable Assets for Best Results
- Blogging Consistency Is the Key to Blogging Success!
When you complete these 10 steps, then all you need to do is start blogging and the readers and money will follow!
Let us get started by going through the 10 steps.
Step 1: Choose A Blog Niche and Name
The first step in how to start a sports blog is choosing a blog niche and name.
Ideally, you have a picture in your mind of what you want your blog to look like.
In other words, what do you want your blog to accomplish?
Some of you might want to start a general sports blog, that covers every topic from basketball to football, to hockey, to baseball.
These blogs might look like ESPN, Fox Sports, or CBS Sports.
More of you might want to go more niche, getting specific about what you want to blog about.
You might go with a basketball blog that talks about the NBA.
You might go with a football blog that talks about the NFL, or the Champions League.
You could think about doing a hockey blog that talks about the NHL.
You could think about doing a baseball blog that talks about Major League Baseball.
Regardless, you should know what you want to focus on.
Generally, in the blog market, they say that the narrower the blog niche, the better the results.
For you, knowing the blog topic will help you clarify your vision about your profitable sports blog.
It also pays to get focused on your blog audience.
Next, you will choose a blog name – BrettsTopSports.com, GymSports.com, BetterBasketball.com – and then buy the domain name from GoDaddy or Google Domains.
Step 2: Buy Web Hosting – GreenGeeks for Budget-Conscious, Kinsta or WP Engine for the Affluent
The next step after choosing your topic and blog name is to buy web hosting.
Web hosting is where your blog is physically located on computer servers.
Generally, all bloggers go with a company for web hosting.
We recommend GreenGeeks if you are budget conscious.
If you are more affluent, we recommend Kinsta or WP Engine.
GreenGeeks costs $2.95 a month to host your sports blog on the web.
Kinsta or WP Engine costs around $30 a month per site.
Either way, you will find it is amazingly easy to sign up for web hosting, install WordPress, and get started with your sports blog.
That entire process can take less than 15 minutes!
Buying web hosting is the necessary 2nd step to starting a sports blog, and we hope you sign up for GreenGeeks, Kinsta, or WP Engine to get started soon.
Step 3. Sign Up for Email Marketing with GetResponse
After you have bought the web hosting, set up WordPress, and gotten to your WordPress blog dashboard, the next step is to integrate email marketing into your profitable sports blog!
Email marketing is when you give your email address away in exchange for some free gift, and then you get on an email list.
Only now, the tables have turned.
As a profitable sports blogger, you place opt-in forms on your blog, and then people will give their email addresses to you in exchange for a free gift – such as a weekly newsletter.
When you get email addresses and gain new email subscribers, you open up a significant revenue stream for your profitable sports blog.
We recommend doing email marketing with GetResponse, starting for $10 a month.
The idea is that you send an email to your readers every week.
When you do this, you reinforce your readership and offer value that they can read on the go.
As we will see later, you can also monetize your email list by sending emails that promote various sports products – baseball bats from Easton, basketball shoes from Amazon, etc.
When you have email marketing, you can send emails to your readers and earn additional revenue.
You must start soon with this, so that you can build your profitable email list over time.
Most profitable sports blogs have some form of email marketing on their site.
Start with email marketing by signing up for GetResponse, starting for $10 a month.
Step 4. Get Access to WordPress Themes with Genesis Pro
Now that you have set up your blog on your web hosting and integrated email marketing, it is time to think about the design of your profitable sports blog.
The design of a blog is often called a “theme.”
Because you are using WordPress to build your blog, these designs are called “WordPress themes.”
When you log into your WordPress dashboard, you will see there are hundreds of free themes.
We prefer premium themes that are more beautiful, and our preferred WordPress themes are the Genesis Pro themes from StudioPress.
For $360 a year, you get to use 10 themes from StudioPress, called Genesis Pro.
The Genesis themes have been found by SEO experts such as Matt Cutts to be the best for SEO, so we really recommend using the Genesis Pro collection from StudioPress.
What is better, is that if you sign up for web hosting with WP Engine, then these 10 themes – Genesis Pro – come for free with your web hosting package, saving you $360.
Sign up for your WordPress themes with Genesis Pro.
Step 5: Buy A Serpstat Subscription for the Best SEO Blog Tool
Now that your blog looks beautiful and ready to go, you will need an SEO tool to help you with your keyword research.
Keyword research is a part of SEO – search engine optimization.
What you do is buy an SEO tool such as Serpstat, and then you do research into what articles you should write for your profitable sports blog.
Some articles might be newsworthy for that day or week, and other articles might still be relevant years from now.
For those articles that are always relevant – called evergreen articles – you should do keyword research with Serpstat to identify the keywords that will work best for your blog post.
Serpstat features a 7-day free trial before the price rises to $125 a month.
It is an immensely powerful SEO tool that we recommend you use before writing each post.
It can also help you build backlinks, essential for SEO success.
Serpstat adds a lot of SEO value to your profitable sports blog, helping you to rank more highly in the search engines.
Thus, we recommend signing up for the 7-day free trial of Serpstat, and giving Serpstat a try.
Step 6: Monetize Your Blog with Affiliate Marketing, eBooks, and Online Courses
The next step in how to start a profitable sports blog is what we call “monetizing your blog.”
In other words, the part about building a blog is about making money blogging.
You should know that affiliate marketing is often where many profitable bloggers begin.
With affiliate marketing, you draft articles reviewing products that you think your readers will like and love.
Then, you add an affiliate link to the products, taking your reader to a store so they can make a purchase.
When they buy, you get a percentage of the sale price.
Be sure to study the difference between a regular link and an affiliate link.
You can also make money blogging by writing eBooks and filming online courses.
You could do an eBook for $67 about how to make it in varsity baseball, or how to get accepted to college athletics.
Additionally, you could do an online course for $397 – $997 talking about how to be the best wide receiver, or how to be the best golfer.
If you are making eBooks, you can sell them directly from GetResponse to your email list.
If you are doing online courses, you will want to use a recommended vendor such as Kajabi.
For around $99 a month, your online courses are hosted on these platforms, and your students can buy direct, with credit card processing included.
You can even sign-up affiliates to promote your eBooks and courses, so you make money from other people’s affiliate marketing of your product!
Step 7: Promote Your Blog on Social media with Tailwind
After you have worked to monetize your blog, another channel for promoting your blog posts is certainly social media.
With social media, you can promote your blog and blog posts to a large audience.
While most people think of FB when they start with social media, we think that Pinterest is the best option for promoting your profitable sports blog.
The way to do this is by using Pinterest, and then signing up for Tailwind.
Tailwind is a social media app that many profitable bloggers use for managing their Pinterest.
Some bloggers find a significant boost in web visitors to their blog because of using Pinterest.
Tailwind also lets you promote your blog on Facebook and Instagram.
When you are ready to promote your profitable sports blog on social media, sign up for Tailwind – it is only $20 a month – and get started.
We recommend Tailwind for promoting your profitable sports blog on social media.
Step 8: Sign Up for MonsterInsights Pro for the Best Blog Analytics
Starting a sports blog, as you can see, is easy, but there are steps that you must take to achieve success.
Another of these steps is adding blog analytics to your WordPress dashboard.
The #1 blog analytics platform is Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is very fancy and complicated to install, and works well with experts, but not as much with beginners.
With Google Analytics, you would be able to know how many people were visiting your site, and you would have traffic numbers, and you would be able to see your top-performing posts.
Obviously, these data are integral to any profitable blog.
Because you are using a WordPress blog platform, there are two ways to install Google Analytics.
- MonsterInsights Pro
We recommend MonsterInsights Pro, which costs $99 a year.
With MonsterInsights Pro, you can quickly and easily build out your Google Analytics account, all from a user-friendly dashboard right on your WordPress dashboard.
It is amazingly easy to use, and for $99 a year MonsterInsights Pro has much more data and analytics than most people get with Google Analytics.
It really unlocks the true potential of Google Analytics.
Sign up for MonsterInsights Pro $99 a year to get started adding Google Analytics to your profitable sports blog.
Step 9: Write Pillar Content & Linkable Assets for Best Results
You are now well on your way to writing a profitable sports blog.
There are certain principles for success that really work when you implement them.
The first principle to consider is that of writing pillar content.
Pillar content is often the content that shows up on the first page of the search engines.
For example, “how to start a blog” is pillar content.
Another big article that is pillar content is “how to make money blogging.”
A third big article that is pillar content is “a beginner’s guide to blogging.”
There are dozens of big articles that you can write, that are considered pillar content.
When you draft these articles, you get more traffic to your blog and more affiliate sales.
What is more, you can convert readers to email subscribers with email marketing, and you can promote both affiliate offers, as well as eBooks and online courses.
These pillar articles, when properly constructed, are called Linkable Assets.
The idea with these linkable articles is that you write such excellent content that people will want to link back to these articles.
It is one of the best ways to build a backlink, and that is helpful for you getting to the top of Google in the rankings.
Be creative about your pillar content.
- How To Get Started With X
- Make Money With X
- Beginner’s Guide To X
For X, you can insert:
- Blogging
- Email Marketing
- SEO
- Social Media
- Amazon
- Inbound Marketing
- Digital Marketing
- Online Stores
- ECommerce
- PPC Advertising
And much more.
The concept here is that when you have pillar content, with at least 40 articles linking to each piece of pillar content, then you will have a blog structure that appeals to the Google search engine crawler 😊 and your readers.
Step 10: Blogging Consistency Is the Key to Blogging Success!
Finally, the last step is about blogging consistency.
The rule of the day is that blogging consistency is the key to blogging success!
Let us look back to Quick Blog Profit’s first 100 articles.
The first couple months I averaged 20 articles per month.
Then, in February, I wrote 54 articles in one month!
The last 4 months, only 10-15 articles a month.
Not all your months will be as successful as others.
However, if you sit at the keyboard and blog consistently, then you will have a far better chance at achieving profitable blog success.
If you are treating your blogging like a day job, or like a new enterprise, then checking into work is imperative.
You should set a goal of 2-3 articles per day.
Some days could have more.
Some days could have less.
However, as long as 5 months later you are sitting back, and saying – wow, I wrote 100 articles!
Then you will be in the money.
Blogging consistency is the key to blogging success.
If you have a situation where you are not really blogging after a period of success, then remember this rule and get back to 2 more articles.
You will thank me later.
Summary
Now, you should have a promising idea of how to start a profitable sports blog.
You might be a high school or college athlete hoping to get signed up to a bigger program.
You could be a coach, keeping track of your school’s sports performance.
You might be a scout for a big-league team, tracking new standouts.
Or you want to build a blog that is reminiscent of ESPN.
Either way, you now know how to start a profitable sports blog.
- Choose A Blog Niche and Name
- Buy Web Hosting – GreenGeeks for Budget-Conscious, Kinsta or WP Engine for the Affluent
- Sign Up for Email Marketing with GetResponse
- Get Access to a Premium WordPress Theme Collection With Genesis Pro
- Buy A Serpstat Subscription for the Best Blog SEO Tool
- Monetize Your Blog with Affiliate Marketing, eBooks, and Online Courses
- Promote Your Blog on social media With Tailwind
- Sign Up for MonsterInsights Pro Blog Analytics
- Write Pillar Content & Linkable Assets for Best Results
- Blogging Consistency Is the Key to Blogging Success!
Make sure you make your purchases of web hosting, email marketing, and SEO tools.
The sooner you do, the sooner you will be off to the races with a profitable sports blog that achieves your goals.
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